Recreational boating is a broadly enjoyed activity throughout the world. In the United States alone, recent statistics show that more than 12 million recreational vessels are registered, with a vast majority of these being motorboats (46%), personal watercraft (20%), and cabin motorboats (14%) (See “Recreational Boating Statistics 2010,” COMDTPUB 16745.24, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Coast Guard, Office of Auxiliary and Boating Safety). While these vessels have many styles and structures, a common feature of all watercraft is that passengers have difficulty in boarding, especially with small watercraft, due to the relative movement between a stationary surface, such as a dock or jetty, and a moving surface, such as a boarding platform or loading deck that is undulating relative to the wave motion of the water surface.
Additionally, many users utilize watercraft for diving purposes. Unfortunately, many boats are not manufactured with a boarding assist handrail integrated into the structure of the boat to assist passengers in boarding the boat as they ascend from a body of water. Thus, many owners who desire a boarding assist device are required to separately acquire a handrail in addition to mounting hardware and install the mounting hardware and handrail onto the boat using mounting equipment. Installation of a handrail in this manner is relatively costly, time-consuming, and may result in permanent alteration of the boating structure, all of which are undesirable.
It is a common practice for manufacturers of watercraft to provide a variety of deck fittings for accommodating various accessories, such as trolling motors, fishing rod holders, and the like that aid in greater utilization of the watercraft for use in a variety of boating related activities, such as fishing, and the like. In particular, it is common in the gunwale of vessels to include a number of bore holes or rod holders for the receipt fishing rods.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for a boarding assist device for use with watercraft that can be easily secured into a pre-existing structure, such as a rod holder, eliminating the need for additional mounting hardware and equipment, while also being removable in order to allow the rod holder to store fishing rods as desired.